Ghosts
by mirroredsakura
Summary: How can love and hate dance so delicately on the razor's edge? [SephxKadaj] [single sentence sketches]


Single-sentence fragments for LJ community 1sentence, set Alpha. This odd ship veers more towards sensuality rather than sexual.

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 **01 - Comfort  
** Kadaj had never known Sephiroth, but sometimes Mother's voice twisted into something cold and arrogant and _male_ \- and that was sometimes better because he at least knew for sure what exactly that voice wanted from him.

 **02 - Kiss  
** When Sephiroth finally lost to Big Brother, Kadaj could feel that presence drifting away, leaving his body silent and empty - he was a puppet with cut strings, and he half-imagined a last mocking kiss brush against his lips as Sephiroth left him to die.

 **03 - Soft  
** The wisps of disintegrating feathers brushed delicately against his skin, but the presence in his mind that drifted away with them was hard and angry and vengeful - still, Kadaj might have been happier about dying if he hadn't already known Sephiroth cared not about leaving, but only about his defeat.

 **04 - Pain  
** It hurt when Sephiroth left; Kadaj's body had already been used and broken and cast aside, but Sephiroth was bent on coming back - and Kadaj knew that next time, he wouldn't be alive to watch.

 **05 - Potatoes  
** There was a great deal of things that Kadaj had learned when he and his brothers finally reached Midgar - new things that didn't matter but were interesting anyway like teddy bears and toy trains, carrots and potatoes… Sephiroth's presence turned from these discoveries and discarded them, hating the memory of _humanity_ they provoked when he needed to be a god.

 **06 - Rain  
** When it was over, the rain had started to fall and Kadaj could've sworn he'd heard Mother's sweet voice calling to him… he nearly cried because he had almost begun to believe that Mother was a dream and there was only Sephiroth left to love.

 **07 - Chocolate  
** There were so many things Sephiroth had been able to have, seen, _experience_ during his lifetime-when the moment of Reunion came, Kadaj felt the memories sweep across him... every Spartan moment was made positively decadent in the reliving, like fine chocolate on the tongue.

 **08 - Happiness  
** Kadaj had thought once that if he fulfilled Mother's wishes, she might deem him worthy of her love, and that Sephiroth might be the big brother Cloud Strife refused to be - he didn't think that now.

 **09 - Telephone  
** Rufus's words on the phone were always cold and impersonal and completely untrustworthy - but Kadaj was used to that, Sephiroth's voice in his head spoke in exactly the same way.

 **10 - Ears  
** Yazoo had once asked Kadaj how Mother's voice sounded like, but he hadn't been able to say because it _changed_... sometimes a woman who demanded him to hurry, to find her, to bring her back and sometimes a man, cold, commanding and mocking his inability to do anything but what he was told to do.

 **11 - Name  
** Kadaj and his brothers hadn't known anything when they'd arisen, but the looks they'd received once they'd reached the city and started asking questions told them that _Sephiroth_ was a name to be feared, hated, and in its own twisted way... respected.

 **12 - Sensual  
** When he wanted it to be, Kadaj could make his voice many things; dark, drawling, dangerous... but it could never be like the one that haunted his nights; black silk and dark velvet sliding over steel, and he _wished_ , oh how he wished...

 **13 - Death  
** Kadaj didn't really bleed, even after being dealt the last fatal blows his body could take... but he could die, and in those last moments he could be selfish - he could want it all: Mother, his brothers... and _him_.

 **14 - Sex  
** It wasn't ever real, but sometimes when he dreamed... when he dreamed, he could believe it all: the velvet whispers, the slide of skin against skin, the sharp pain of teeth, and the silken weight of long silver hair spilled across his chest.

 **15 - Touch  
** Loz often watched Kadaj run his fingers listlessly through Yazoo's hair, rub his face longingly against it like Loz had seen stray cats do, and he wondered if Kadaj really hated Sephiroth as much as he said he did.

 **16 - Weakness  
** Kadaj might almost have been an object of supreme indifference to Sephiroth; a tool to use, a puppet to string along, like any number of his old clones... if he weren't so aware of just how badly Kadaj wanted to be _more_.

 **17 - Tears  
** At the last, Kadaj couldn't be sure if the wetness that ran down his face was due solely to the rain - just like he couldn't be certain the despair came from failing Mother, or from being left behind.

 **18 - Speed  
** Even while it was Sephiroth who took over his body, even though it was Sephiroth who moved in it and fought like every movement was effortless, Kadaj was there too and he could feel how hard Sephiroth pushed him, how fast he made him move... and he could only hope that Sephiroth found him good enough.

 **19 - Wind  
** When the single dark-feathered wing unfurled and Sephiroth vaulted into the air, for the first time Kadaj shared in his fierce joy at the taste of freedom, at the feel of being able to _fly_.

 **20 - Freedom  
** Sephiroth's presence was like a heavy cloak, blinkering Kadaj's field of vision to only what _he_ needed… but when he launched him, _them_ , up into the air, Sephiroth gave Kadaj the sky.

 **21 - Life  
** Kadaj could taste the anger and the hate as Sephiroth's presence boiled away from his body… but there was a very faint sense of regret that the Revive pulsing under the skin of his wrist couldn't be used on the body Sephiroth was leaving behind.

 **22 - Jealousy  
** Sometimes when he dreamed, he could sift through Sephiroth's memories - some of them were newer, and he knew how it felt to be a god; some were older, and he woke to the taste of Cloud's kisses like bile in his throat.

 **23 - Hands  
** Kadaj had small hands - they were nice hands, long-fingered and callused in the right places to grip a sword, but they weren't Sephiroth's, not yet - those he would grow into... sooner or later.

 **24 - Taste  
** He remembered the burn of mako on his tongue and the panic of feeling it filling his lungs; he didn't remember what life had been like before the scientists had thrust the taste of power like a hot glow down his throat and he learned he would never be his own person ever again.

 **25 - Devotion  
** He never knew why he fought so hard to keep going - more than he wanted Sephiroth to win, he wanted to keep something for himself.

 **26 - Forever  
** A long time ago, a scientist once asked Yazoo how it felt to look so much like the original but still be outstripped by Kadaj - Yazoo didn't tell her that it was easier to look like Sephiroth than it was to feel him inside, always, hating him for being _alive_ while he was not.

 **27 - Blood  
** Sometimes when he slept, Kadaj's dreams took him back to Sephiroth's earliest memories and the heavy heat of Wutai - he liked those memories the best because he could pretend they were his... the sword was different but the color that dripped from it never was.

 **28 - Sickness  
** The Geostigma was Mother's creation but he knew without seeing that it bit Big Brother just as hard as it did the children - that piece of cruelty inside him was glad to see it because there was an even tinier piece inside Sephiroth that hurt to see Cloud's pain.

 **29 - Melody  
** The Lifestream was a chorus he couldn't understand, ghostly wails of consciousness mixed with the song of the Cetra... Sephiroth's voice was gone when he entered, but Kadaj knew it would only be a matter of time.

 **30 - Star  
** Sometimes the voice was almost kind, serenely speculative of an existence sailing the cosmos with a dead planet as his vessel - and he took small comfort in the knowledge that for Sephiroth, _dead_ didn't necessarily mean _alone_ , and it never meant _forever_.

 **31 - Home  
** The Forgotten City was the closest thing Kadaj had to home, and he had learned to shape much of it to his own liking in the last two years - but it was also the site of Sephiroth's triumph over the Ancient, and that overshadowed everything.

 **32 - Confusion  
** Sometimes Kadaj woke up from the dreams and couldn't remember who he was - he took to wearing his hair shorter and shorter until the length barely cleared his nape… so that when he reached back to feel the heavy curtain of Sephiroth's hair, it was never there.

 **33 - Fear  
** Nothing could make Kadaj fear the promise of pain or the looming presence of death - but Kadaj knew the weight of despair, and he knew, because Sephiroth knew, the fear of being forgotten.

 **34 - Lightning/Thunder  
** Kadaj couldn't control what memories flickered through his dreams when he slept… and he didn't think Sephiroth always could either - he dreamed sometimes of the old days, when once Sephiroth's magic had been more finely attuned to the shrill whine of Bolt 3s as they struck the earth, but Sephiroth never wanted to acknowledge a time before his hate had kindled in Nibelheim's fire.

 **35 - Bonds  
** Even when it was over, _over_ , and the woman in rose had taken his hand and led him away, Kadaj could still feel the faint wash of Sephiroth's _presence_ , like the drape of a wing over his shoulder - and he knew that some chains are not made of metal, and some can never truly break.

 **36 - Market  
** There wasn't much left of Midgar, and the remains of the Wall Market had been picked over in the latter years until there was hardly anything left in the rubble… Kadaj kicked curiously at a women's high-heeled shoe covered in black glitter, and wondered why it reminded Sephiroth of honeybees.

 **37 - Technology  
** The first time Sephiroth ever made Kadaj laugh was when he looked at his own phone through the cloud of Sephiroth's memory which knew it as a PHS - somehow, in only a few years, the ever-changing pace of technology had left even Sephiroth an old man.

 **38 - Gift  
** Sephiroth did not give him the sword, but Sephiroth made Souba his, a bond of belonging strong enough to rival the way Masamune was Sephiroth's.

 **39 - Smile  
** Kadaj told himself it didn't matter which one of them Mother wanted as long as they could make her happy - but it was a lie, because in his heart of hearts, he knew the only one left smiling would be Sephiroth.

 **40 - Innocence  
** All little boys miss their mothers - but when Kadaj realized that she had been right there in the President's lap the entire while, silent - he realized he'd been a fool, and that perhaps there really had ever been one voice inside urging him onwards.

 **41 - Completion  
** Yazoo knew that Kadaj swayed forever on the knife edge of sanity, and he wondered whether Reunion would wipe that away with the force of Sephiroth's will - or make it worse.

 **42 - Clouds  
** He had so much _power_ … Kadaj watched, envious, as even without a summon materia, Sephiroth dragged the very essence of a bright sunny day into his fist and changed it, wrapping a cloak of cloud around his battle arena and shielding it from the watchful gazes on the bridge of the _Shera_.

 **43 - Sky  
** _Gravity_ was not an immutable law of physics on the Planet, just a general guideline of being - Kadaj knew what it meant not to fall, but that seemed far and away from what Sephiroth could do when he took them both into the sky.

 **44 - Heaven  
** Sephiroth's Promised Land was a lie… or it was for his Remnants; Kadaj had picked through the snows of the Northern Crater and found no power to make either of them a god.

 **45 - Hell  
** Somehow, no matter the dream that twisted Kadaj in his sheets, it always turned back to the memory of Sephiroth in the center of a pit of flame, waiting for another new beginning.

 **46 - Sun  
** Kadaj seldom saw the sun when he ventured out into the world - it was as if the bright face turned away from the sight of him and his brothers, knowing that if Sephiroth took the Planet, he would also take her too.

 **47 - Moon  
** Cosmo Canyon was a place of too much knowledge - Kadaj realized early that these people would never have hidden Mother, they wouldn't have suffered her existence to continue… but he continued to be curious, of the creature that Sephiroth's memory called the Lunatic Moon.

 **48 - Waves  
** Kadaj looked into the slimy water of the fens with some distaste - not just because of the constant rippling of movement beneath the waters that he knew meant Zoloms, but because it reminded Sephiroth too much of baiting Cloud.

 **49 - Hair  
** When old men told their stories, ghosts were smoke and mirrors and footsteps in the night - Kadaj knew that Sephiroth's ghost was heavy, a weight of charged electricity and promise that crackled over Kadaj's features and made them anew.

 **50 - Supernova  
** As Sephiroth hung limply in the air, the drag of his wing the only thing keeping him airborne after the shining onslaught of Cloud's final, brutal, attack, he felt his hold on Kadaj's body falling away - and mixed with the fierceness of his anger was a tiny, tiny sliver of regret for this boy whose only crime had been obedience.

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I've been sitting on this series for over 9 years now, half-done. When I originally started it, I remember being so proud of it, certain that every sentence that slipped off the string was a pearl. Then when I lost more than half of it, and the words refused to come, I gave up and left it there for years, sulking. Many things have changed between then and now, but these fragments have never left me, and while they're not perfect, they're out there now.

Not my usual taste in ships, but exploring impossibility has always had such an allure. :)


End file.
